Richard Dawkins gets it right: Shame on the National Academy.The American National Academy of Science has agreed to serve as the host for the Templeton Foundation as they give out a prize to the best person who speaks in favor of science and religion. (Francis Collins is the odds-on favorite to win.) This is despicable behavior for a "scientific" organization. Why can't they be neutral when it comes to the potential compatibility science and religion?
How many of you think the National Academy would host an award for the best atheist scientist?
Previous Templeton Prize winners include: Mother Theresa, Billy Graham, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Chuck Colson and Freeman Dyson. Only one of these was eligible for membership in the National Academy of Science.
5 comments :
By their very nature Science and Religion are not compatible. One follows a method of observation of reality and rational conclusions, the other places emphasis on believing that which cannot be observed or reproduced.
How sad such a thing should occur for the impression it will give people about the ideology and compatibility of the two.
There's quite a discussion going on over at the Intersection blog on this topic. The accommodationists are out in force. I would post a link to Prof. Morans' comment over there except that it would be deleted by Mooney or Kirshenbaum as they delete any comment with a link to a thread on the blogs of Myers, Coyne, or Moran.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2010/03/22/my-free-inquiry-interview-why-we-need-religious-moderates/#comments
I'm sure that Prof. Moran will enjoy reading an interview with Francis Collins in todays' Washington Post. The response to the last question, copied below, will surely pique his interest.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/23/AR2010032304094.html?sub=AR
I think anybody who has worked with me previously at NIH over the last 17 years would tell you that's not something that has influenced my scientific decision-making, so I think we're okay.
Forty percent of scientists are in fact believers, so it's not like I'm this complete wacko. It's just one of those things that's generally not talked about, and I guess I have disturbed some of those that don't share that belief by talking about it. The stage has been occupied mostly by the extreme voices, coming from really shrill atheist pronouncements that science makes God no longer relevant or, on the other hand, fundamentalists pounding the Bible and saying science must be wrong because it doesn't agree with their interpretation of Genesis.
Surely most people don't think either of those are right, but they haven't heard much about what are the alternatives that could, in an intellectually satisfying way, put these worldviews together. All I try to do is say there's a way to do that.
I think anybody who has worked with me previously at NIH over the last 17 years would tell you that's not something that has influenced my scientific decision-making, so I think we're okay.
Forty percent of scientists are in fact believers, so it's not like I'm this complete wacko.
All this basically means is that at least 40% of the scientists should not call themselves such
Winner of the 2010 Templeton Prize is Prof. Francisco Ayala.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-templeton-prize26-2010mar26,0,1500604.story
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